see (for) yourself I pray thee

What are we doing when we pray? Do we ask our Maker to remember us, and be gra­cious to us, and help us out? It is His very char­acter to relent­lessly love and pursue us (Isaiah 54:10, Zeph 3:17, Psalm 36:5-6, Psalm 86:15, 1 , Psalm 107, Psalm 119:64; 1 Chr 16:34, Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:10) He is waiting to bless us – yet we need to seek right­eous­ness and walk in it. (Proverbs 3:5-6, 2 Chr 16:9) We have free will, we can choose to pursue our own goals rather than aligning our will with His. (Psalm 37:4) It is disin­gen­uous to pray for relief and blessing while we remain in our own paths. Sug­gesting that our prayers somehow change Him, the omni­scient and omnipo­tent being that never sleeps (Psalm 121:4), that we give him new infor­ma­tion or entreat Him to change His plans is idol­a­trous!

Instead, our prayers align us with, or attune us to His per­spec­tive and will. We can trust that He is good. We can even bring about mirac­u­lous heal­ings or won­ders if we believe (Mark 9:23), not because we make G-d do some­thing that He would not have oth­er­wise wanted, but rather by bringing down His blessing, real­ising here on earth His good and per­fect will that He had all along. So yes by our prayers we change reality. The con­cept of “attuning” is not arbi­trary. Cre­ation is all about fre­quen­cies and oscil­la­tions, from the cre­ation days, Sab­bath, the yearly fes­ti­vals, day and night all the way to high-fre­quency elec­tro­mag­netic radi­a­tion dis­rupting sleep pat­ters and release of mela­tonin for our bodies’ self-healing, there is a lot of power in fre­quen­cies, and by attuning our­selves we can make big dif­fer­ences in the world. But we do not change Him, He is unchange­able. With cre­ation, He set up the pos­si­bility of choice, while knowing the end from the begin­ning (Isaiah 46:10).

To me, it is so easy to believe in being a failure: maybe under a gen­er­a­tional curse, maybe just deluded and use­less. There is always some­thing holding me back, dis­al­lowing me from ful­filling my des­tiny. This has become my default posi­tion and self-view. From where I stand now, this mindset seems a lot more plau­sible, and easier than enduring the con­scious­ness that my fate is in my hands, that the power and love and blessing are all there in my Maker’s hand. He yearns to pour it out over all of us. All we need is to know what to ask, and to ask, and then to act. All of this is prayer.

By aligning to His thoughts and pur­poses in prayer, we also open up our per­spec­tive for the things to come, and see our biogra­phies in con­text. He is ful­filling His good pur­pose (Num 23:19, Psalm 135:6,
Is 14:24, Is 46:10). It may seem strange to assert this with all the suf­fering, injus­tice and cru­elty in this age, but we need to keep in mind that this is self-inflicted. With choice comes expe­ri­ence. It is not on us to judge: is all this suf­fering worth a humanity that has a free will? What we can judge how­ever should be very heart­ening: every­thing in our lives’ past He did not deem bad enough to prefer us not being there, indi­vid­u­ally and as a col­lec­tive. Maybe it’s because of what’s in store for us, that we should keep our hopes up and not give up.

Rabbi David Aaron points out these things beau­ti­fully in two videos.

Rabbi David Aaron speaking at Sinai Indaba, South Africa:
How to Get Your Prayers Answered: Is Anyone Lis­tening?

Rabbi David Aaron speaking at Sinai Indaba, South Africa:
Living on Pur­pose: Why on Earth Are We Here